by Glenda Larke
'And what did you find out?' Temellin asked. His tone was cool, but the bleakness in his eyes was searing.
"This/ woman with me is the Legata Ligea's slave, Aemid. She has been with the Legata since she – the Legata – was brought to General Gayed's household in Tyr as a child. The woman we knew as Derya is the Legata Ligea. She is not and has never been a slave. She may be Kardi, she may be your sister, but she was raised a Tyranian citizen, an adopted daughter of the General. At sixteen she joined the Brotherhood as a novice, and by dint of her talents and ruthlessness she has risen to the rank of Legata Compeer. Her Magor skills have been
used to bring about the imprisonment and torture and
,.„z: ‹¦-…,,…*. -,..„•. «-»
enslavement of cabochon knows how many innocent people. Tern, she came here to betray us. She has Kardi blood but a Tyranian soul. The infamous Rathrox Ligatan sent her to Kardiastan specifically to bring about your death. Her full intention is to ensure our ruin, to ensure complete Tyranian control over all Kardiastan.'
The shock of those listening swept the room, buffeting us all. Magoria-jessah, Jahan's wife, started to cry.
Temellin stood motionless, his arms now limp by his sides. There was no expression on his face. He turned to Aemid. Ts this true?'
Aemid nodded. 'Magori, I am sorry,' she said. She looked at me. 'I raised this woman, but everything the Magoria-pinar says about her is true. She will destroy you all if you give her the opportunity.'
They felt Aemid's belief in her own words; so did I. It rolled over us as tangible as wind-ripples on a sand dune. A sigh of painful tension followed it. A split second later, I was blasted with the sentiments generated by a roomful of baleful Magor. My stomach roiled in response and I almost disposed of the meal I had just eaten.
The next words were Brand's. 'But Ligea has changed her mind,' he protested. He looked at Temellin. 'Surely you cannot doubt that! She's not the same person any more. She has told me the way she feels now; test my truth -'
'You guileless barbarian. Can't you see how she has fooled you?' Pinar asked, contemptuous of his apparent naivety. 'Your protestations are valueless.'
Temellin didn't appear to have heard Brand. He turned to walk to where I still sat motionless, and faced me across the table. Ts this true?' he asked quietly. 'Are you the Legata Ligea?'
I stood up, meeting his gaze. 'I was. Once.' It seems such a long time ago now…
'You were sent here to kill me?'
'To capture the man who was organising the Kardis and causing problems for Tyrans. And note you are still free, Temel. And alive.'
'Did you come to the Mirage with the intention of betrayal?'
'Temellin -'
He drew his sword and it was already glowing with the gold of its summoning. 'Did you?'
I was silent, knowing there was nothing I could say to lessen his anger, or his grief. He was thinking my love had all been a sham, that every moment I had spent in his arms had been a lie. His lack of faith tore wounds in my soul, adding to the hurt caused by Aemid's willingness to believe the worst of me.
'Did you?'
'Yes,' I whispered. 'Yes, I did, at first.'
Then with a cry of rage and pain he flung his weapon at my chest, as if he could not bear to have contact with its hilt when it impaled me.
There was no way he could miss. He was only a pace or two away across the table and he hurled the sword with all the strength of his anger. Yet I did not move. I could not move, not when it was he who wanted me dead. Just knowing his intention was death itself to me.
Only one person made any move to help: Brand. As the sword left Temellin's hand, he threw himself across the room, a cry of pain wrenched from him as he realised he would never make it in time. But even he was driven to a halt by the unexpectedness – the impossibility – of the sword's trajectory.
One moment the blade was hurtling directly at me and I knew I was going to die, the next it was quivering,
perpendicular, in the wood of the tabletop, its vibrations singing out over the room as it shivered there.
In shock, no one else moved or spoke.
Two tears slid down my cheeks.
In the end, I was the one who broke the uncomprehending silence to explain. 'I once fitted my cabochon to your sword hilt, Temellin. You will have to use someone else's blade.' I turned my head slightly to where Garis, his white face aghast, still sat with a half-filled spoon in his hand. 'Garis, give your weapon to theMirager.'
Garis did not move.
Temellin still stood before me, his face now a mixture of emotion: horror at what he had just done jostled with relief that he had not succeeded and guilt that he had tried – and it was all overlaid with biting, tearing anger. At me.
Pinar's voice spoke into the silence, adding yet another layer to the shock. 'Here – use my blade, Tern.'
But Temellin was already moving, brushing past his wife, thrusting Aemid aside to get to the door. He nodded to Korden as he went. 'Ward her,' he said. 'Him too,' he added, indicating Brand, and he was gone.
Garis looked up at me, his expression pleading to be told none of this had happened. I placed a hand on his shoulder and said softly, 'What Brand said was also true.' Then I started across the room towards Korden.
'Your sword,' he said.
I unsheathed it and handed it to him, hilt first. He took it, insolently placing his cabochon in the hollow of the hilt. ' 'Any cages here, Korden?' I asked wryly.
'Your room will do.' He was stiff with anger, but I had an idea not all of it was directed at me. At Pinar perhaps, for the crass, insensitive way she had broken
her news and hurt her husband? Or at Temellin for having trusted me in the first place? 'We are not the Brotherhood,' he added.
I inclined my head and shifted my gaze to Pinar, standing beside him. Her face was a twist of misery and bitter rage; in her victory, she had lost everything she had ever wanted, and she knew it. The revelation that – although she had been right, although she had been more perceptive than anyone else – she could still lose was such a shock to her that, for one brief moment, faced with the person she judged to have been the cause of her loss, her mind was bared in a flash of naked emotion. The moment was so brief I doubted if anyone else noticed, but I saw – and was appalled, for my senses glimpsed a jagged red crack across the face of her mind.
It was an effort to turn away, to touch Aemid on the arm and say, 'Aemid, you are not well. You should not have made this journey.' And, in fact, she did look ill; her complexion was grey, her eyes sunken and the skin loose on the bones of her face.
'It was necessary.'
I shook my head. 'You should have had more faith in Magor blood. It was not necessary.'
I walked on to the door.
They warded me in my own room, encircling it with their sword-spells, using conjurations I had not yet learned and did not know how to break. Then they left me.
I was so tired I slept immediately. The pain would only begin the next day, when I would see Temellin's face again and again as he hurled his sword, intending to bring about my death.
**- ¦*›'
I woke in the morning to a different room. Tucked away in a cabinet that had not been there before was a practical and welcome addition: a bathroom. The Mirage Makers had evidently noticed my discomfort at having to use a pail supplied the night before by my jailers; I was touched by this sign of pragmatic thoughtfulness.
The other changes were less useful. There was a large hole in the outside wall as if the Mirage Makers wanted me to feel I was not actually imprisoned at all. I knew differendy. I could feel the warding and knew, hole or not, I was imprisoned as effectively as if I were chained. The other walls were now covered with drawings, all ridiculous: people with three eyes and lopsided faces, or with four arms and no legs, or who were half man, half insect. There were hundreds upon hundreds of them, all doing different things – standing on their heads, swimming in the sky, cutting their toenails
with an axe, drinking soup from a sieve, birthing flowers from their breasts… If I had been in the mood for absurdities, I could have spent hours examining them, hunting out their riddles, laughing over their delights.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Instead, I remained most of the day lying on my pallet, looking at a ceiling made of rippling waves of water that defied gravity, and seeing none of it. An Illuser I didn't know came with my meals. He told me his name was Reftim and he was carefully neutral when he spoke to me. He was a small rotund man, with rounded features, a puffball nose and the face of a market joke-teller, but I sensed his antipathy and did not make the mistake of equating his jovial looks with his character. However, he was polite enough and, in answer to my first question, he told me Brand was also confined to his room. I asked him to tell Temellin I must see him and he promised to pass on the message.
But Temellin didn't come.
Later in the day, Reftim did bring Aemid to see me.
She looked wretched. Her face was swollen, her eyes reddened. I wanted to hug her, comfort her, but my sense of betrayal stopped me. She should have had faith in me.
'I'm sorry,' she said. Her eyes were fixed on the floor. T couldn't let you betray my land.'
'Our land,' I amended. 'I wasn't going to. You should have known me better.'
She met my gaze then, and her expression hardened. 'I did. That's the trouble. I saw what you became. You became like him. Gayed. You even had the same look in your eyes, the look of someone who doesn't care what happens to others as long as you reach your goal.' She took a deep breath. T know it's my fault. And I deserve punishment. I think this must be it – to see you here, imprisoned like this. To know that the little girl who so bravely hid her cabochon from them because her mother told her to… To see her become the woman I see now, trapped here for the
rest of her life. All because I allowed it to happen. I failed you. I'm sorry, Ligea. I'm so, so sorry.'
She started crying and turned from me. Reftim led her through the ward and out of the room. I averted my face so he wouldn't see the tears welling up in my own eyes. She was right. I had tried so hard to be like Gayed. And I had promised her I wouldn't pose as a Kardi, only to break that promise without a second thought? That was the person I had become.
The next day, I asked to see Korden. He came, bringing all his dislike and distrust with him, none of which he bothered to conceal. 'Well?' he asked without preamble, but I could see that the room startled him. In addition to the wall drawings, one corner now contained a floating set of multicoloured bubbles, each the size of a man's fist and full of moving pictures portraying an insane world of animals that became people, people who became flowers, stars that talked and similar absurdities.
'Several things,' I said. 'You can be as arbitrary as you like with me, but Brand deserves better. A fair hearing. After all, anything else smacks too much of Tyrans, does it not?'
'In matters of treason, it is the will of the Mirager that prevails,' he said stiffly.
'Brand can hardly be said to have committed treason. He is not Kardi,' I snapped. 'You know Brand cannot lie to you. See to it the Mirager is fair. It is your duty as one of the Magoroth, surely.' i 'What else?' 1 'I would like to know my fate.'
'Most of the Magor are pressing for your execution. But we Magoroth have voted to allow the Mirager to
*-i-*l„.,!‹-:____________________
*„ J„,.:„:- u,.u:____________________
lr v_
i,:~.,:„+-
after all. Besides, you are – unfortunately – his heir, which means it is difficult to subject you to the ordinary processes of Magor law anyway. Although there are many who feel we shouldn't bother with niceties like that.'
'I would like to see him.'
'He does not want to see you.'
'Do I get no opportunity to defend myself?'
'That is also the Mirager's decision.'
'Rough justice, eh?'
His lips tightened, but he said nothing.
I breathed in, deeply. I had made up my mind. It was time to make irrevocable my decision on whether I was Tyranian or Kardi. Time to bring an end to lies, to deceit, to keeping my options open. And yet, it was so hard to say the next words, to discard publicly the values of a lifetime and replace them with other principles. Ligea Gayed was difficult to kill.
'Korden,' I began, 'when I was still in Tyrans I heard of a plan to attack the Mirage from the west. The legion known as the Stalwarts was to be sent across the Alps -'
He laughed and his scorn swirled around him. 'What is this, some kind of joke? Next, you'll be telling me they intend to bring their gorclaks across the peaks. The mountains are impassable.'
'The plan is a serious one. Taking into account the difficulties of the terrain, the amount of preparation involved, and considering the seasons, I estimate the forces will arrive in less than three months' time. A whole legion; three thousand on foot perhaps, and another seven hundred mounted Stalwarts, on gorclak.'
'Don't be ridiculous. No such force could ever cross the Alps!'
'Your parents' generation underestimated Tyrans. Don't make the same mistake. Especially not of the Stalwarts.' I frowned, baffled by the intensity of his disbelief. 'You know the truth when you hear it. Why, then, should you doubt me?'
He remained contemptuous and angry. 'Believe me, we have talked about little else lately. We have come to the conclusion that you must be able to do what we cannot: hide a lie. How else could you have walked among us concealing your identity so cleverly? Temellin even slept with you without sensing your duplicity! You are an enormous danger to us. You represent something we always felt was impossible: a liar in our midst.'
I stared at him, suddenly aware of another emotion, inadequately concealed, lingering around him. Korden was in a state of shock.
I tried to explain. 'I didn't lie to any of you. I just didn't tell all the story. There's a difference. You can see that, can't you?'
But he couldn't. The Magor not only didn't lie, they didn't try to deceive. And the ordinary Kardi, awed by the reputation of the Magor, would never have tried, either. What I had done was unthinkable, and it had left them reeling. Their only explanation was that I was able to conceal lies; therefore nothing I said could be automatically believed.
He said finally, T can't possibly imagine what you hope to gain by telling this tale about the Stalwarts.'
'Tell Temellin. And tell him I must see him.'
'I'll tell him. But don't wait up.'
He turned on his heel and left.
Temellin did not come to see me until the next day. He was not alone; Brand was with him.
Brand entered first, his expression as unreadable as ever. He didn't speak, but he came up to me and raised the back of his hand to my cheek in an intimate gesture of caring far more moving than any kiss would have been. I looked away from him to Temellin. I sensed a tinge of shame and uncertainty about the Mirager as he watched the two of us.
He did not greet me. He said flatly, 'You wanted to see me?' and then walked across the room, avoiding eight or nine fish swimming around in an expanse of apparently unconfined water at head-height, to stand with his back to the hole in the wall.
From where I stood he was a silhouette, rigid and forbidding. He continued, 'You have an unlikely tale about a Stalwart invasion of the Mirage. I asked Aemid what she knew about it. She said, not unexpectedly, that she had never heard of it. So now I'm going to ask Brand, because if there is such a thing planned, I'm sure you would have told him. Tell me what you know about it, Brand – and remember I can detect lies.'
Brand looked at me helplessly, his anger at Temellin growing.
I intervened. 'He knows nothing.'
'She didn't tell me everything. Only those things where she thought my advice would be useful,' Brand said.
Temellin looked unconvinced. 'That's not what Aemid says. She says Ligea always asked your advice.' He sighed. 'You're loyal, I'll say that for you, Brand
. What I can't understand is why. She'd put a slave collar around your neck again the moment she had the chance.'
'Ligea freed me before we ever came to the Mirage. She has paid me for every year of my service to her or to her father. I give my loyalty to her because she is worthy
r, J d- amp;
of it, not because I am ordered to do so. In fact, she has been asking me to leave her, to seek a life of my own.'
Temellin looked at him, astonished. 'Then why didn't you?'
'I didn't want to leave, that's why. And I'm glad I didn't. Ligea's damned lucky she didn't die in the dining hall with your sodding sword in her heart – how could you do that to a woman who gave you all the love she had to give? She would have died for you half a dozen times over, but you couldn't trust her, could you?' His voice was so thick with contempt he could scarcely speak. 'When I think of the way she felt about you -'
'It seems she has fooled you just as she fooled us.'
'Ligea and I were brought up together. There's nothing I don't know about the way she thinks. She was raised by men who tried to twist her into a coldblooded instrument of their revenge. They tried, but they didn't succeed, because she could never quite reconcile what they tried to make of her with what she knew herself to be. They tried to sharpen her into a ruthless killer; instead, she made torture obsolete in the Cages of Tyr. How could you have loved her, and not sensed her capacity for loving?'
'You're the one who is mole-blind -'
Brand shook his head, his stare in Temellin's direction unforgiving. 'I remember the day I arrived at General Gayed's house in Tyr. He'd just bought me, cheap, at a slave auction. I was twelve years old, a dirty, skinny, ill-fed boy who had spent two whole years on auction blocks, being passed from one foul slave dealer to another across the Exaltarchy. I'd been beaten, starved and abused in ways you probably haven't even heard of. My parents were dead, my home and my inheritance stolen from me, my body used.'
